Success & Burnout

It’s been quite sometime… I went through a small ordeal the last week, was it food poisoning or stomach flu, I am not sure, and I don’t care to find out more. Just knew that my body temperature went up and down and my digestive system seemed to be working at a very strange pace, I could not sleep at night, and yet too tired in the day. It was quite a bad experience, thank God for healing and that it was over. Life is slowly getting back to normal.

I was trying to finish a book and finally it was finished, not that I enjoyed it greatly, but there are surely some interesting things to learn from it. There are 2 portions where the author was talking about “success” and “burn-out”, the later was something I am interested in, since I had had a taste of it 8 months back. He said one of the things that intensifies burnout is a lack of willingness. And this willingness depends on resting, allowing our soul and our spirit to be refreshed and replenished, before we can give our all.

How true! Memory of those burnout days swept before me, I felt depressed, overworked, not restful, and most of all, unwilling to do the things I was doing, and that marked the beginning of entering that terrible few months. Now that I am at a state of being able to look back and laugh, I can understand the issues clearer, perhaps the steps to be taken to avoid falling into the same state also become clearer. Before we embark on any undertaking, surely we need a willingness to do it.

Next is about “Success”. What does each of us deem success as? Perhaps, as a student, you see it as having good results. As a working adult, when you receive your promotion and a pay rise, or being appreciated. As a parent, your children listen and obey you, and that you bring back more than enough bread for them. As a businessman, you clinched the best deal in town. Yet all the above seem so temporal and shortlived. Therefore we continue in our pursuit of what we deem success day in, day out, and we work harder and harder, rarely do we say enough is enough. We fall into the trap of getting the world’s ideas of success: fame and fortune, power and pleasure.

That perhaps was what I was pursuing unconsciously, unknowingly, slowly I was falling into the world’s system, thinking the more I achieve, the happier I would become. Selah. The book was good in this aspect, the author brought the focus back, if we are to analyse carefully, what we really want in life is contentment, fulfillment and satisfaction. This is real success.

Just sharing some thoughts, today’s writing sure sounds serious. Anyway, make a guess of the illustration above. Have a blessed, full of peace, week ahead!